Tantalus Media

Founded: 1994

Headquarters:

Level 5, The TeaHouse, 28 Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, Victoria, 3205, Australia^[1]

Tantalus Media (formerly Tantalus Interactive) is an Australian video game developer based in Melbourne and founded by former Beam Software programmers Trevor Nuridin, Tim Bennett and Andrew Bailey.

History

Tantalus are best known for licensed platform conversions, beginning with the Sega Saturn in the 1990s to modern platforms such as the Nintendo Switch and iOS. During the 1990s, they were under the name of Tantalus Entertainment, and were partially owned by UK developer Perfect Entertainment, which secured contracts with Psygnosis for ports of their popular PlayStation games to the Sega Saturn.

In 1998, they separated from Perfect and became Tantalus Interactive. Private investment then allowed the company to develop an in-house title known as 7th Gear, to the point it was able to secure a contract from Acclaim Entertainment to use the game engine for a "kart" style game with the South Park license. This led to their first original title, South Park Rally, which was released on all four major platforms at the time including the Sega Dreamcast.

The company changed its name to Tantalus Media in 2007 following a hostile buyout from then-CEO Tom Crago and an investment from private equity company Netus.^[2] In 2010, following the completion of the Nintendo DS & PSP title Megamind: The Blue Defender, CEO Tom Crago re-acquired the business from Netus. In the decade since, Tantalus briefly re-branded to Straight Right, relocated its entire studio and underwent a number of changes which despite keeping the business branding of 'Tantalus' to this day, heralded a radical change for the developer. During this time, Tantalus Media dabbled in touch-gaming development and largely returned to being a studio dedicated to porting to other platforms.